


your scars are my scars; i bleed for you

by cosettefauchelevents



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Child Abuse, and like one f word sorry tiny ones, lion king rewatch turns to angst, protective! ross, try writing angry ross without swearing it's v hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4446725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosettefauchelevents/pseuds/cosettefauchelevents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ross finds out that Demelza’s never seen Lion King, actions must be taken. But the memories it brings back aren’t quite as delightful…</p>
            </blockquote>





	your scars are my scars; i bleed for you

**Author's Note:**

> so essentially, what started as me writing ridiculous modern au demelza being forced to watch lion king for the first time ended up as very, very angsty hurt/comfort. what can i say.

“What do you mean, you’ve never seen the Lion King?” 

Not much surprised Ross Poldark, not after the weeks of constant shock on his return from Iraq, but some things? Some things would shock anyone. 

“I mean, I’ve never seen the Lion King! Jesus, Ross, you act as if I’ve murdered someone!”

“In the eyes of most people, Demelza, it’s much the same thing” 

“Ross, it’s a film about cartoon lions, not the word of God!” 

“It’s a retelling of Hamlet!” 

“And I’ve got work to do or not to do, and Lord only knows who’ll do it if I don’t!”

Ross smirked at her, sometimes forgetting how utterly ridiculous his wife’s jokes could be. “Get Jud or Prudie to do it- we do pay them wages, you know” 

“Oh, I know it,” Demelza muttered. It was her constant complaint that Ross’s two elderly aides got away with doing nothing and being paid for it, whilst she did all their work and got nothing for her troubles. (Ross would always reply that she got paid in very different ways. “After all,” he’d grin, kissing her, “I don’t do this to Prudie.” “I should hope not,” she’d murmur against his lips, “or you’d be having a lawsuit on your ‘ands.”) 

“Oh, Ross, if I leave it to 'em it’ll be done like as never!” 

“Well, is it vital?” 

The grey sky beyond the window behind her illuminated how bright she was, how luminous in the grey dullness his life could have become as she prevaricated, biting her lip as she bent over the piles of papers littering her desk, red curls hiding her face. He brushed them behind her ear, his hand cupping her jaw as he brought her face to eye level. 

“More important than spending time with your husband?”

Her answering smile was sunlight on a winter day, a flash of pure joy. She tasted of tea and the ginger biscuits she insisted they have in constant supply, and he thought he could stay here kissing her until he died. 

But first? Lion King. With an immense effort, he pulled away, leaving her wide eyed and flushed.

Walt, he mused, I hope you know how much I’m sacrificing for your reputation here. 

“Come on. There’s no point in being the CEO if you can’t randomly abduct both yourself and your wife from your workplace in order to watch early nineties Disney classics.” 

“An’ here I was thinking you were only in it for the fame.” 

If Jud and Prudie looked askance at the two of them walking hand in hand out the doors of the office at two in the afternoon, then it was nothing to them: at this point they really should get used to it. 

Back at Nampara, Demelza made hot chocolates whilst Ross lit the fire and surreptitiously watched her as she pottered about the kitchen. He’ll never get tired of watching her, her odd clumsy grace, the way she moves so purposely through his home and his life as if she’s always been there, the way she fits into his world like the puzzle piece he never knew he was missing. 

A loud clink startled him from his reverie as she plonked the hot chocolates down beside him, spilling a drop on the hearth. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer” she grinned, tapping him on the nose. 

“We watching this film or not then?” 

“What? Oh, yeah, hang on whilst I find it.” 

Demelza watched him as he rifled through drawers, a grin pulling up the sides of her mouth. 

“Ross?” 

“Yeah?”

“You actually have it on DVD, don’t you?” 

“Aha!” He pulled it out of the drawer with a flourish, trying to ignore Demelza’s growing mirth. 

“I can’t believe,” she gasped, “that Ross Poldark, youngest CEO of a minin’ company in years, hero of the workin’ class, still owns Lion King on DVD.” 

“I’ll have you know it’s a cinematic classic!” 

“It’s for six year olds!” 

“HAMLET, DEMELZA!” 

“LIONS, ROSS!” They stared at each other for a moment, grey locked on blue, and suddenly burst into laughter. Demelza was nearly howling, clutching her sides with tears rolling down her cheeks, and Ross wasn’t much better. If Jud and Prudie walked in now, thought Ross, what would they think to see their employer and his wife rolling around on the floor like children, crying with laughter? It wasn’t that funny, not really, but the stress of the last few weeks, what with the Warleggan threat drawing ever closer and Francis growing increasingly unreasonable, had taken its toll on the both of them. 

Ross was the first to recover, crawling across the hearth rug to put the DVD into the player and set up the TV whilst Demelza, still giggling softly, rearranged the cushions on the sofa to her liking. 

Despite her earlier derision, from the first sunset over Pride Rock Demelza was hooked, gazing with rapt attention at the film. Ross even had to remind her to drink her hot chocolate, but was met with an indignant shushing noise when he dared to interrupt “Be Prepared”,which he found much funnier than he had any right to. By the time Simba was calling for his father in the canyon, Demelza was a wreck. 

She buried her head in Ross’s chest and curled into his arms, only cheering up at the arrival of Timone and Pumba. Ross just held her tightly. 

(Ok, so he might have been crying a little too.) 

The shadows lengthened as the film went on, and soon they were lit only by the glow of the fire and the glare of the television screen. Demelza shuffled, her hair tickling his neck as she drew a blanket around them both. She got cold so easily, Ross didn’t have the heart to tell her he was warm enough already. 

The orange glow of the fire lit up her bright hair and made her seem somehow unearthly, and as Ross watched the planes of her face glow and fade in the light of the television, he silently gave thanks that Elizabeth had been quite so changeable during his absence. 

The film finished, and Demelza turned to him, eyes shining. “I suppose you liked it then?” 

“Liked it? T’were tha’ good…” In times of extreme emotion or fatigue, Demelza’s Cornish accent would revert to its original strength, making her sound like a pirate or smuggler- a fact that Ross never failed to find endearing. 

“Are you glad I made you watch it then?”

“Eh, glad enough” she smirked, and Ross bent to kiss her. When they broke apart, he had only one question. 

“My love, exactly how is it you haven’t ever seen it before? I thought everyone in the world had at some point, like trying hot dogs or swearing at cyclists.”

“Well, when the benefit cheque don’t nearly stretch to Dad’s vodka and food for the other seven of you, there ain’t much call for film watchin’, y’know.” 

Not for the first time, Ross felt a hot surge of anger towards the man who had made his wife’s childhood hell. “Was it really that bad?” he said gently. They never really discussed their respective pasts: some wounds were far too sore to be probed too often, and so that dark and impoverished childhood had stayed just as undisturbed as his time in Iraq. 

“Some ‘ad it worse, I’m sure,” she said softly, “but after Mam died… God, I didn’t think I’d still remember how i’ felt to be tha’ hungry, tha’ sad all the time, but I do, I remember ev’ry time the fridge’s empty, and every time I see bloody Co-op brand vodka I can feel him coming up be’ind me wi’ it on his breath…” She shifted almost unconsciously as if the scars on her back were still fresh bruises, and Ross felt each of them as keenly on his heart as she ever had on her flesh. 

“I’ were always so cold, even when Mam were alive we all ‘ad to put socks ‘round the window frames to keep the damp out, but after… we slept wi’ our coats piled on top of us, we were too poor to fix the heating and Lord knows the council wouldn’t.” She seemed almost to be talking to herself now, and suddenly he saw why there were blankets in every room and she owned more jumpers than anything else. 

“I used to- to dream of goin’ to the library and getting things out for my own, like we saw in school, but it was on the other side o’town and Dad’d rather burn the money ‘n give us it for the bus. Then when I was old enough he said I wasn’t t’go there anymore, I ‘d ‘ave to be workin an’ looking after the littlies, and there was nothin’ I could say to stop ‘im. Tha’s why my reading an’ that wasn’t as good when I first came here, y’ remember? There were too many kids in the class for the teacher to notice one kid wasn’t doin’ so well, and no-one at home could be fussed to ‘elp.” 

He didn’t know what to say; only that he was so, so unutterably proud of her for coming from so little and being so very much.

“I thought I’d gotten over it, y’know, but Jesus, I don’t think I’ll ever… I saw a man on the street who looked li’ Dad the other day and I nearly walked into a bus I had to get away tha’ fast. Sometimes there’ll be a tramp wi’ the same look i’ their eye as his when he was on a bender an’ all I can think of is wha’ I’ve done wrong, wha’ he’ll be hittin’ us for this time. I see kids down the estates , girls my age w’ near grown kids o’ their own an’ the kind o’ bruises that don’t fade an’ I think that’s me in another life, tha’ would be me if you hadn’t been there…” 

His shirtfront was wet with salt water and it was trickling down his own cheeks as well, and all he could do was hold her tighter and wait for the storm to pass, knowing he could do nothing to erase the past. 

“An’ I remember when I made him dinner an’ he’d throw it all away an’ shout because he was hungry an’ I’d forget to make the kids quiet an’ he’d be mad then too an’-an’-an’ I loved him still, Ross, I love him still now, though it’s a bleedin’ mistake, an’ he won’t and never ‘as loved me back and I don’t know why, Ross, why doesn’t he love me? Am I tha’ awful a daughter? Am I tha’ unworthy-?” 

She was sobbing openly now, as if she had been storing all this up for so long that she no longer had any choice about letting it out.

“No, Demelza, no, you are so, so worthy, you are worth more than all the stars in the sky and I don’t know how your bastard father doesn’t see that, because I do and you know I can be the densest man alive but God, I see you and to me you are the most wonderful, most worthy person in the universe, and I’d like to fucking throttle that monster for what he did to you.”

He was rambling and he knew it but he also knew he would never forgive himself if he didn’t reassure her, didn’t tell her how important she was to him, didn’t tell her exactly why she was the best thing to ever happen to him. He couldn’t stand to hear her ragged, muffled sobs against his chest any longer. 

“Demelza, Demelza my love, breathe. Breathe, darling, and listen to me. What your father did to you was not your fault. He was a bad, bad father and what you went through was something no-one should ever have to, but none of it- none of it, do you hear me?- was any of your fault. It’s ok, my love, it’s alright now, he can’t hurt you anymore and he doesn’t deserve even to be thought about, ok? You’re alright, you’re going to be fine…” 

They stayed there for a long time, until the fire had burnt out and Demelza’s breathing had steadied again. She reached down and took Ross’s hand, twisting his wedding ring absently.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for saving my life.” 

“Don’t be silly-“ 

“Thank you for showin’ me there was more t’life than jus’ scrapin’ by. Thank you for takin’ me away from my dad. Thank you for bein’ my best friend in the world, Ross, thank you for bein’ my husband. Thank you for makin’ me ok again.” 

“I don’t-“

“For once in your life, Ross Poldark, shut up an’ let your wife tell you she loves you” 

And for once in his life, he did.


End file.
